It is a lush, plush anachronism, a 100-year-old Tudor mansion on a lavishly landscaped two-hectare estate in the heart of exclusive Holmby Hills. Purchased by Hugh Hefner in 1971 for $1 million and change (U.S.), the Playboy Mansion and the grounds surrounding it are now estimated to be worth more than $50 million.

It was the ancestral home of vicarious sexual excess for the best part of the tail end of the 20th century (the original Chicago mansion was shuttered back in 1974). Today, however, it is little more than an elaborate set for rent and all-purpose party venue — as it was last week for the kickoff party of the Television Critics Association fall preview tour.

But the house and all its hedonistic trappings seem somehow faded now, even shabby, dulled by a patina of metaphoric dust. Last February, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health determined that party guests had contracted Legionnaire’s disease from bacteria in the infamous hot-tub “grotto.”

In her 2010 memoir, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion, former Playmate Izabella St. James wrote: “Everything in the Mansion felt old and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general scent of decay.”

Now 85 and the mansion’s sole resident, Hef’s hatchet features have degenerated with age into something more closely resembling the Cryptkeeper of comic Tales From the Crypt. His reputation as a promiscuous, pipe-chewing, pyjama-clad cad has been called into question by his former fiancée, disenfranchised “girl next door” Crystal Harris, who besmirched his legendary prowess on air to Howard Stern.

And yet the Playboy Mansion somehow continues to fascinate, even in these more enlightened times, with The Girls Next Door, a six-season cable hit, spinning off another two Playboy “reality” shows, and another two that remain unsold pilots. The degeneration of Hefner’s relationship with Harris got its own hour-long Lifetime special, Hef’s Runaway Bride.

Oscar-winning Canadian documentarian Brigitte Berman filmed an independent profile, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, that premiered two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival.

This fall, one of NBC’s most ballyhooed new prime-time series is The Playboy Club, a calculatingly nostalgic return to the franchise’s storied ’60s heyday: in essence, a kind of Mad Men After Dark.

Steinem came to critics’ tour with a new HBO documentary, Gloria: In Her Own Words, which will air Aug. 15.

“The hierarchical response has two poles,” she said, “The very worst men are into sado-masochism and the very best men are into nostalgia. So I think this is like the nostalgia industry.

“It’s like World War II . . . the last time we were really right. Someone told me that we had actually put more money into making films and television series about World War II than we put into World War II. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But it sounds true, right?

“I’m happy to say that the film that was made out of the expose that I did (1985’s A Bunny’s Tale) lasted longer that the clubs it was exposing.”

The implications of television’s sudden backward embrace of old-school sexism — besides The Playboy Club and AMC’s existing hit, Mad Men, ABC has a new fall show, Pan Am, celebrating the stereotype of the 1960s stewardess — are essentially a matter of perspective.

“The question,” Steinem says, “is the attitude of the film or series. Is it aggrandizing the past in a nostalgic way, or is it really showing the problems of the past in order to show that we have come forward and continue to come forward? I somehow think the Playboy shows are maybe not doing that. There are other shows that do.

“I feel dismay that young men especially are being subjected to that and made to feel that’s a mark of masculinity.”

With production on its currently airing final season wrapped, the show’s erstwhile party boys gathered for the critics one final time before going their separate ways (at least, until a possible Entourage movie, which producer Mark Wahlberg seems committed to making happen).

“We are all choked up,” admitted series star Adrian Grenier. “Truthfully. We’ve been together now eight years. We’ve spent, you know, countless hours, weeks, creating something that we are all very, very proud of. So it’s not only sad to say goodbye to each other, but also what we’ve created.”

And that, insists series creator Doug Ellin, has never been the hotbed of misogyny that has often been suggested.

“It’s a guy’s show,” Ellin insists. “It’s a young man’s show. It’s about young guys and how they really talk.

“I’ve tried, from the get-go . . . Vince and Eric were always very, very respectful towards women. Drama and Turtle, who really weren’t getting women, were the ones making the obnoxious comments. And Ari has been a pretty great family man since the beginning, and pretty respectful of his wife.”

“I also think that we have had some of the strongest female characters on television,” adds actor Kevin Connolly, citing in particular his own character’s former fiancée, Sloan, as played by the Montreal-born, Toronto-raised Emmanuelle Chriqui (also currently in The Borgias).

The on-set true romance of True Blood co-stars Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer would seem to be one of the few that might actually last. Not so much their onscreen counterparts, plucky Sookie Stackhouse and the vampire Bill Compton.

“Our love in real life is fine,” assured Paquin. “So I’m totally happy for our characters to be as sad and distraught and messed up and hating each other as they like.

“I mean, let’s face it: It’s not interesting television if everything works out for Bill and Sookie, and then they, you know, adopt five babies and live happily ever after.”

“I actually pitched to (creator/producer) Alan (Ball) that I was getting a bit bored with our life,” Moyer interjected, “and, like, maybe he could add somebody else to the mix.”

Paquin shoots him a look. “Thanks, babe,” she quietly snarls.

“It’s also about Sookie growing up,” he quickly continues, “and Sookie making decisions for herself, rather then being the innocent.

“You know, she starts this as this innocent virgin in the first season and she’s changed from there. She’s starting to choose what she wants, instead of being preyed upon by these vampires.

“I think it’s really important for the story that all the characters move through these arcs, maybe find their way back to each other . . . or maybe not.”

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.